Three Things We’ve Now Learned About “American Idol”‘s Top Three

Guess what night it is? It’s the night when one of the subjects of The Hollywood Reporter’s top-three American Idol finalist interviews will no longer be on the show, giving that interview just a leeeeeetle bit less life!

No, though, we kid. Joshua Ledet, Phillip Phillips and Jessica Sanchez basically already have unspoken record deals, and there’s a fairly good chance you’ll be hearing about one or all of them quite a bit over the coming months, so these interviews are worth checking out, if only to familiarize yourself. But before that, a couple facts from each, that we find more or less relevant to Idol as it currently stands.

“There is a lot more that I haven’t brought to the show yet because I don’t want to be too over-the-top,” Josh said. This is actively amazing. And should Joshua make it to the final two–he better bloody well make it to the final two, because I want to wake up into a just world tomorrow morning–it’d be really smart to pull that lot more out. Three songs. One previously unheard trick per.

Possibly. Maybe. Kind of. Look, that’s the point of you and your family owning “a lot of guns,” yes? To potentially shoot yourself. Or “to keep yourself safe,” with the knowledge that keeping yourself safe might involve shooting people at some point.

This should be pretty believable based on Idol‘s hailstorm of responsibilities, but the evidence we’ve got here is Jessica saying she was too busy to listen to Mariah Carey’s version of “I’ll Be There” to inform her own.

…Right, we’re calling bullshit. Mariah Carey’s version of “I’ll Be There” is less than 4:30. This isn’t some 40-minute extended megamix. This takes about the same time to listen to as a bathroom break. If contestants have time to hold Twitter-reply parties, they have time to listen to a 4:30 song. Therefore, we’re going to go ahead and say Jessica hadn’t heard this version, nor did any of the judges/mentors inform her that it existed. You know. Just some common sense.